Top 10 UK stocks, ranked by price-based X-Ray score

The ranking uses only what can be read from a share price and from trading volumes: how firmly the price is trending, how much it has moved over three, six and twelve months, how calm it has been (volatility and the deepest fall of the past year) and how easily the shares trade. A fifth lens, income, counts only for companies that pay dividends. The scores are percentile ranks against every share on the London exchange, so a trend score of 85 means the price is behaving better than roughly 85% of London shares.

What the list cannot do is look inside the company. We hold no company accounts for UK-listed businesses, so profits, debt and valuation play no part, and a share can climb this table because its price is rising for reasons the accounts would not support. For the same reason the page says "price-based" in its title: it answers "which UK shares have been behaving well and are easy to trade", not "which UK shares are cheap".

London is not only the UK stock market. Of the 988 lines on the exchange that trade at least $1 million a day, 542 are shares of foreign companies bought through London's international order book (their tickers begin with a zero): a Swiss, Nordic or German company can be traded in London, but its home market sets the price and the rules, so those belong on the page for that country. Another 78 are investment trusts and other closed-end funds. A trust moves with the value of the portfolio it holds and with the discount or premium on its own shares, not like an operating business, so ranking Scottish Mortgage next to Shell would compare different things.

That leaves 368 operating companies with their own London listing; some of them earn most of their money abroad. Funds are recognised by name and by a reviewed list, so a fund with an unusual name can still slip through; tell us if you spot one.

London prices are quoted in pence, so a share at 1,200p costs £12. This list compares returns and traded value rather than price levels, and each company's daily traded value is converted from pence to US dollars before the $1 million cut-off is applied. The cut-off matters more in London than in most markets because the exchange lists thousands of small companies, including those on AIM, the junior market, whose shares can go days without a trade. A stock that rarely trades can show a very calm price simply because nobody is buying or selling, which is why liquidity is a filter first and a score second.

The leader is Shell plc, and its strongest lens is trading volume. The top three are Shell plc, DCC plc, Seplat Petroleum Development Company PLC. All three sit near the top of the liquidity lens, which is where the biggest London names score close to 100 and which lifts them above smaller companies with similar price behaviour.

The ten stocks returned a median 46% over the last twelve months, against 12% for all 368 eligible companies. That gap shows how much of this score is momentum: a list built on price behaviour has usually already risen, which is information about the past and not a forecast.

Use the table to find shares worth a closer look, then open the stock page and read the company's own annual report and its latest trading update. A price-only ranking is most useful for removing shares that are hard to trade or stuck in a downtrend, and least useful for deciding whether a price is fair. For income, the UK dividend list ranks the same companies on a different rule.